Aqif Blyta

Aqif Blyta (1887-21 January 1945), born Aćif Hadžiahmetović, was Mayor of Novi Pazar under the Albanian Kingdom during World War II.

Biography
Aqif Blyta was born in 1887 in Novi Pazar, Kosovo Vilayet, Ottoman Empire to a family of Muslim Albanians. He was active in the cause for Greater Albania from within Yugoslavia, and in April 1941 he was appointed Mayor of Novi Pazar under Nazi Germany's client state, the Albanian Kingdom, during World War II. He led a pro-Albanian Muslim Gendarmerie that wore Albanian symbols, and he enacted Albanization, saying that all of the Bosniaks of Novi Pazar were now Albanians (he banned the fez to assimilate them into Albanian culture). Blyta was also responsible for sending the 221 Jews of Novi Pazar to the Sajmiste concentration camp during the Holocaust. His murder of 7,000 Serbs led to his execution by Yugoslavia in 1945 as the war drew to a close.